Military Industrial Congressional Complex Pushes War With Russia

mishtalk |  This bit of asininity just came in from McCain: Send Weapons to Ukraine.

McCain also repeated idiotic comments on Russian interference in the US election.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is calling on President Trump to send lethal aid to Ukraine after attacks this week were blamed on Russia-backed rebels.

“Vladimir Putin’s violent campaign to destabilize and dismember the sovereign nation of Ukraine will not stop unless and until he meets a strong and determined response,” wrote McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain also reiterated his call for Trump to maintain sanctions on Russia and impose new ones for Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.

Failing to provide more help to Ukraine, McCain said, risks the country’s sovereignty and American credibility.

“Ukrainians are not asking Americans to do their fighting,” McCain said. “Nearly 10,000 Ukrainians have died to protect their homeland and many more are serving and have sacrificed for the cause of a free and united Ukraine. But America does have a proud history of helping free people to defend themselves.”

Just after I published Preposterous Rumors From Pelosi on Russia, Trump, Sanctions, McCain started yapping.

Military Industrial Congressional Complex Pushes War With Iran

craigmurray |  So what are the Clinton gang doing while Trump introduces anti-Muslim immigration discrimination? Oh, they are pushing for war with Iran, which might give pause to some who think the world would have been less awful had Hillary won.

Here is the front page of the resolution introduced into the House of Representatives by Democrat Alcee L Hastings, an extremely close ally of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who had to resign in disgrace as chair of the Democratic National Committee after WikiLeaks published emails establishing her corrupt endeavours to fix the primary elections for Hillary against Bernie Sanders.

The Resolution reads “To authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces to achieve the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

There is in fact no evidence that Iran is continuing a covert programme to produce nuclear weapons. British, French and Russian intelligence all assess that Iran is sticking to its agreements and – here is a key point – so do the CIA. But when did politicians ever let facts stand in their way?

Trump’s mad visa ban, which excludes Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States which are the main financiers, armers, ideologues and exporters of Salafist terrorism, turns out to be imposed on the countries which were on Obama’s watchlist. As the Hastings resolution shows, the anti-Iranian and pro-Saudi madness is bipartisan. To include Iran but exclude Saudi Arabia is further evidence of the twisting of US foreign policy to serve the interests of Saudi Arabia and its ally Israel.

Need More Rex Tillerson and Omarosa - Less of DJT's Dipsticks....,

thesaker |  It is a rare privilege to be able to criticize a politician for actually fulfilling his campaign promises but Donald Trump is a unique President and this week he offered us exactly this opportunity with not one, but three different SNAFUs to report.

First, there was the botched raid against an alleged al-Qaeda compound in Yakla, Yemen. First, let me commit a crimethink here and remind everybody that for all the great Hollywood movies, Americans have a terrible record of doing special ops. The latest one was typical. First, it involved Navy SEALS, one of the most disaster-prone US special forces. Second, it involved special forces from the United Arab Emirates (don’t ask why, just don’t). I am pretty sure that using US Rangers alone would have yielded better results. Third, as always, they got detected early. And then they began taking casualties. This time from female al-Qaeda fighters. Finally, they botched the evacuation. They did kill some kids and, so they say, an al-Qaeda leader. More about this raid here and here. As I said, this is pretty much par for the course. But I am sure that some Hollywood movie will make it look very heroic and “tactical”. But the real world bottom line remains unchanged: Americans should give up on special ops, they just can do it right.

Second, there was the absolutely terrible press conference by General Flynn.

So not only did Flynn put Iran “on notice” like a high-school principal would do to a rowdy teenager, but FOX TV is already speaking about “lines in the sand”. Wait – were “lines in the sand” not one of the dumbest features of the Obama Presidency? And now, just one week in the White House, we see Trump doing exactly the same?

This also begs the question of whether a very intelligent man like Flynn seriously and sincerely believes that he can bully or otherwise scare Iran. If he does – then we are all in a lot of trouble.

There is also the troubling aspect of the language chosen. Instead of speaking about “international concern” or the will of the UN Security Council, Flynn decided to use the kind of language typical of a wannabe World Hegemon. Again, been there – done that. Do they really think that this kind of imperial hubris will work better for them than it did for the Neocons?

Lastly, the Ukronazis are apparently back on the warpath. For many months now they have been shelling the Novorussians, and they even have tried a few, rather pathetic, local attacks. This time around this is different: incoming artillery strikes are counted not by the tens, but by the thousands and the shelling is happening all along the line of contact. Of course, this is not directly Trump’s fault, but it does show that the Ukronazis in Kiev are taking their cues from the former power configuration – that is the Germans, the Neocons, and the East European cry-babies à la Poland and Lithuania. At the time of writing, there are no signs that Trump is taking the situation under control. The good news is that the Russians are still waiting, but with that level of violence there is only that much they can wait before having to give the Novorussians the green light for a counter-attack (the Novorussian forces are already engaging in strong counter-battery fire, but they have not yet pushed their forces forward).

I sure hope that this week is not a harbinger of what the rest of the Trump Presidency will look like.

Sean Spicer's Replacement Shows How It's Done

DJT and the Establishment's Replacement Negroes Dilemma

thesaker |  A very brief and quick look at the post USSR Western “left” reveals that it did everything BUT stick to its original principles and ideals.

To elaborate, we must look at certain examples; beginning with the highly controversial subject of refugees. The “left” in the West continues to uphold the principle of aiding and welcoming refugees, and this is good and ought to be applauded. However, the “left” does not even seem to question how those refugees have become refugees in the first place! Whilst it is a fact that most refugees are in essence political refugees who have been displaced due to wars inflicted upon their countries, mostly seeking regime change, the Western “left” seems to turn a blind eye to this reality. Even worse, when the Western “left” gets democratically elected and assumes power, it does not try to reverse the course of events that create refugees.

It gets even worse. Take the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as examples. Both wars were initiated by the “right” wing Republican American President GWB. However, his partner in crime in Iraq was Britain’s Labour leader Tony Blair; who was meant to be from the Western “left”.

And whilst the Australian Labor Party (ALP) can hold its head high because it was an ALP Prime Minister (Gough Whitlam) who bailed Australia out of the infamous Vietnam War, other ALP administrations have followed the USA into wars without too many questions asked about their legitimacy and whether or not they conform with the foundations and principles upon which the ALP is based.

Such views and politics have nothing to do with the original “left” values of promoting freedom, supporting the oppressed and working towards social justice; none what-so-ever, and quite the opposite, if anything.

And even though APHEDA, an organization sponsored by Australian trade unions, supports and sponsors humanitarian projects in Palestine, the current ALP leader Bill Shorten has recently described Israeli PM Netanyahu as a friend.

The contradictions within the Western “left” are not the result of a deliberate attempt to create confusion, but rather the direct outcome of loss of identity and soul, and an inability to reinvent itself in the post-USSR New World Order era.

A proper reinvention process requires new ideas, but instead of undergoing a serious process of soul-searching, the Western “left” shopped around for existing populist issues to capitalize on.

Elite Establishment Unhappy About What DJT is Cooking...,

FP |  Believe it or not, President Donald Trump has a grand strategy. According to some analysts, Trump’s endless streams of erratic and apparently improvisational ideas don’t add up to anything consistent or purposeful enough to call a grand strategy. We see it otherwise. Beneath all the rants, tweets, and noise there is actually a discernible pattern of thought — a Trumpian view of the world that goes back decades. Trump has put forward a clear vision to guide his administration’s foreign policy — albeit a dark and highly troubling one, riddled with tensions and vexing dilemmas.

Grand strategy is the conceptual architecture that lends structure and form to foreign policy. A leader who is “doing grand strategy” is not handling global events on an ad hoc or case-by-case basis. A grand strategy, rather, represents a more purposeful and deeply held set of concepts about a country’s goals and orientation in international affairs.

At a minimum, a grand strategy consists of an understanding of the basic contours of the international environment, a country’s highest interests and objectives within that environment, the most pressing threats to those interests, and the actions that a country can take in order to address threats and promote national security and well-being. Grand strategy, then, is both diagnostic and prescriptive. It combines an analysis of what is happening in the world and how it impacts one’s country, with a more forward-looking concept of how a country might employ its various forms of power — hard or soft, military or economic — to sustain or improve its global position. Every grand strategy has a “what” dimension, a notion of what constitutes national security in the first place, and a “how” dimension, a theory of how to produce security in a dynamic international environment and given the tools at hand.

DJT Had Some Black Visitors Today

boston |  President Donald Trump raised more than a few eyebrows with his remarks Wednesday — the first day of Black History Month — during an “African American History Month Listening Session” at the White House.

Sitting beside Housing secretary nominee Ben Carson in the Roosevelt Room, Trump began the session with a circuitous speech in which the president, among other things, lambasted the media and rehashed a recent controversy involving a Martin Luther King Jr. statue in the Oval Office.

“Donald Trump just gave a Black History Month speech about the persecution of Donald Trump,” reads the headline of the Toronto Star‘s account of the speech. A few highlights below, as noted by reporters:

Dr. Changelove’s Legacy In Latin America: Militarization, Right-Wing Coups, & The Rule Of Wall St.

mintpressnews |  But the United States is not the only “America.” 

Indeed, crossing the southern border and entering into that mysterious place called “Latin America,” one encounters a very different Obama legacy, one that is defined by the same policies that Yankee imperialists have employed for more than a century: destabilization, militarization, and exploitation.

Yes We Can!…continue to pursue a neocolonial agenda in Central and South America.  

A mural in Lithuania depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and President-elect Donald Trump embracing in a passionate kiss has gone viral. The meaning of the image is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the skull, but it is no less perspicacious for its lack of subtlety. And while Russia has indeed tacitly, and rather shamefully, supported far-right candidates and causes for its own coldly pragmatic political reasons — Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, etc. — the truth is that Obama’s administration has also backed right-wing reactionaries and extremists where it has suited its interests.

Throughout Latin America, President Obama has been a driving force behind the resurgence of right-wing forces that have rolled back the gains of socialist and social democratic governments, targeted indigenous and African diaspora communities, assassinated activists, and toppled governments where they could.

So, yes, let’s talk about “legacy.”

Dr. Changelove's Legacy In Africa: Terrorism, Civil War & Military Expansion

mintpressnews |  The corporate media is predictably churning out nauseating retrospectives of Obama’s presidency, gently soothing Americans to sleep with fairy tales about the progressive accomplishments of President Hope and Change.

 

But amid the selective memory and doublethink which passes for sophisticated punditry within the controlled media matrix, let us not forget that in Africa the name Barack Obama is now synonymous with destabilization, death, and destruction.

The collective gasps of liberals grow to a deafening roar at the mere suggestion that Obama is more sinner than saint, but perhaps it would be useful to review the facts and the record rather than the carefully constructed mythos being shoehorned into history books under the broad heading of “Legacy.” 

In the summer of 2009, little more than six months after being inaugurated, President Obama stood before the Ghanaian Parliament to deliver a speech intended to set the tone for his administration’s Africa policy. In addressing a crowd of hundreds in the Ghanaian capital, he was, in fact, speaking directly to millions of Africans all over the continent and throughout the diaspora. For if Obama represented Hope and Change for the people of the United States, that was doubly true for African people.

In that mostly forgettable speech, Obama declared:

“We must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans … the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.”

Building prosperity, shedding corruption and tyranny, and taking on poverty and disease, he said
“can only be done if you take responsibility for your future. And it won’t be easy. It will take time and effort. There will be suffering and setbacks. But I can promise you this: America will be with you every step of the way, as a partner, as a friend.”

Despite being the First Black President™, Obama’s words and deeds with respect to Africa perfectly embody “the White Man’s Burden” — that desire to help those poor, lowly wretches whose poverty, corruption, disease, and violence must be the product of some natural deficiency. Surely, five centuries of colonialism, combined with Obama-style imperial arrogance, had nothing to do with it.

Does Nancy Pelosi Take Her Face Off Before She Goes to Bed at Night?

lewrockwell |  Throughout Mexico, millions of communities depend on the “remesas” (remittances) sent home every year from relatives, legal and illegal, in the U.S. Amounting to tens of billions of dollars a year, these funds are Mexico’s only welfare system; the government’s version is so riddled with corruption that it’s virtually nonexistent.

The Corruptos also tax the remittances as soon as they arrive: recipient families must pay off the police chief, the mayor, and the local gang leader(s) – or fear for their lives and their livelihood.

This is the foul sewer of graft that will collapse in ruins when Trump’s Wall goes up to stay.

Peña Nieto laments that illegals in the U.S. are “at risk,” but the truth is darker: they’ll really be at risk if they return home.

Wait – wouldn’t they be safer there?

No way, José. If ten to twenty million illegals return to their family homes south of the border, it could bring down the entire Corrupto cartel.

For generations, the Corruptos have driven northwards millions of their fellow citizens so Enrique and his pals won’t have to take care of them at home.

That’s why Catholic bishops on both sides of the border routinely refer to Mexicans heading north to cross the border as “desperate.”

And who made them desperate?

Not us. After all, they’ve never been here.

Enrique’s pals made them desperate.

The Corruptos oppressed and exploited them as a way of life – that’s why they had to leave!

Moreover, there are tens of millions more Mexicans right there in Mexico who are “at risk” – terrorized by the corrupt multi-party elites that are allied with the drug gangs, the crime-infested military, the murderous Coyotes, and bought-off local officials. All these tentacles of the Mexican Deep State live on bribes, terror, and fraud.

Mexican Globalists Running Mouth-Reckless, Fitna Get Mexico Annexed and Depopulated

shtfplan |  There will be war in the streets, or at least there could be.

The strong armed tactics against Mexico are not making officials happy south of the border.

Now, with an executive order facilitating the deportation of illegal immigrants – and especially those who have committed criminal offenses – as well as building a wall on the border, President Trump has many Mexicans up in arms.

Jorge Castañeda Gutman, former Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Mexico, took things a step further during an interview on CNN with Fareed Zakaria when he suggested that Mexico’s previous cooperation with the U.S. in curbing the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants could end.

Instead, the cartels could be essentially unleashed upon the U.S. – retribution for tough policies on Mexico and other immigrant-producing countries in the Latin American world.

These astonishing words could open up an economic gang war against the U.S. –  very irresponsible words that reveal just how connected Mexico’s leadership is with the violent drug cartels who operate from their territories:

Mexico has a lot of negotiating chips in this matter, Fareed, but it also has measures we could take in other areas. For example, the drugs that come through Mexico from South America, or the drugs that are produced here in Mexico all go to the United States. This is not our problem. We have been cooperating with the United States for many years on these issues because they’ve asked us to and because we have a friendly, trustful relationship. If that relationship disappears, the reasons for cooperation also disappear.

The implications are astoundingly clear – Mexico would consider exporting chaos and violence into the United States as a form of payback for immigration restrictions and controls against the instability that the southern border has brought to the country for decades.

Trump Gave the Body Politic an Immigration Enema

kunstler |  It’s only taken a week for President Trump to give the body politic an immigration enema. The aim, perhaps, was to flush out a set of bad ideas that Barack Obama had managed over eight years to instate as “normal.” Namely, that it’s unnecessary to enforce the immigration laws, or cruel and unusual to do so, or that national borders are a barbarous anachronism, or that federal laws are optional in certain self-selected jurisdictions.

But Trump’s staff sure fucked up the details carrying out his refugee and immigration ban, most particularly detaining people with green cards, and those already granted visas. The blunder provoked an impressive blowback of airport protests, and finally a stay from a federal judge, which muddied the legality of Trump’s executive order — all in all, a tactical stumble for Prez DT, who apparently omitted to consult with an array of government agencies and their lawyers before issuing the decree at close-of-business Friday. For the record, I’m down with the complaint that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Afghanistan were left off the no-come list, since those lands produce more radical Islamic maniacs than anywhere else.

The reader by now probably detects my ambivalent feelings in this bundle of issues and grievances, so let me try to clarify my basic positions: I think borders matter and they need to be protected. I think our immigration law enforcement under Obama has been deeply dishonest and damaging to our politics in ways that go far beyond the question of who gets to come here. I believe we are under no obligation to take in everybody and anybody who wants to move here. I believe we need an official time out from the high-volume immigration of recent decades. I believe we have good reasons to be picky about who we let in.

The most dishonest and damaging trope of recent years is the widely-accepted idea on the Left that illegal immigrants are merely “undocumented” — as if they were the hapless victims of some clerical error made by the government and therefore deserving of a pass. Language matters. The acceptance and repetition of this lie has in effect given permission to the Left to lie whenever it suits their purposes about all kinds of things, for instance the delusion that Russia stole the election from Hillary Clinton and that Radical Islam doesn’t pose a threat to western values (or even exist). And it is certainly true that they are assisted by legacy media giants such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR. The Times, especially is keen to provoke a national crisis that might unseat Trump, by simply declaring it so in a three-column headline

CIA's Lying, Diseased Media Organ Goes After Tulsi Gabbard

WaPo |  The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has had a quiet but well-funded lobbying effort in Washington since well before he began murdering his own people. But that influence campaign’s clearest triumph came only this month, when it succeeded in bringing Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to Damascus and having her parrot Assad’s propaganda on her return.

Gabbard was not the first U.S. elected official to meet Assad. In the early years of Assad’s presidency, several senior U.S. lawmakers publicly traveled to see the young English-speaking optometrist-turned-ruler, in the hope that he might be a reformer, break with Iran and even make peace with Israel. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) visited Assad in 2007. Then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) led a delegation in 2009.

After the killing began in 2011, however, Assad’s friends in Washington largely went underground and a covert influence and intimidation campaign blossomed. The FBI began investigating Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha, due to evidence he was keeping tabs on Syrian Americans who showed disloyalty so the Syrian government could threaten their families back home. Moustapha departed for Beijing in 2012, but he left in place a network of friends, Syrian Americans who nurtured close ties to the regime and worked on Assad’s behalf.

BCG and Google Behind India's Ban on Cash

Washingtonsblog |  Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the omnipresent US-consulting company, and Google, the global data miner, issued a joint report in July 2016 on the “$500 bn Pot of Gold”, which is the Indian digital payment market. Even though the authors deny it, the report gives much reason to suspect that the authors knew that something radical was imminent from the Indian government. The report is remarkably honest about the aims of the whole exercise.

There is no statement in the BCG-Google-report “Digital Payments 2020” to the effect that it is related to the joint initiative of USAID and the Indian ministry of finance, formally established in 2015, to push back the use of cash and promote digital payments. Rather it is presented as a freestanding initiative of BCG and Google. I reached out to one of the authors, BCG’s senior partner Alpesh Shah, to ask about this and he insisted:  “This was a joint BCG-Google report, with no connection / relation to USAID/Indian Ministry of Finance.” However, there is much to suggest that there was a connection. First of all, the subject so perfectly fits with the program of that partnership. The subtitle of the report is “The Making of a $500 bn ecosystem in India”. The steering committee for the report included a representative of Visa, member of the Better Than Cash Alliance together with USAID and affiliate of the partnership of USAID and Indian finance ministry to advance digital payments. It also included PayTM and Vodafone, which are also part of the CATALYST coalition, a project, which according to USAID, is a “next step” in said partnership of USAID and the Indian finance ministry.

The report is a call to arms for all payment service providers. They are alerted that things are going to be shaken up in India. On page three it says:

 “We expect the digital payments space to witness significant disruption in the days ahead.”

The disruption came on November 8, when Prime Minister Modi decreed that most of the cash notes by value were no longer legal means of payment. By itself, the remark about the “disruption in the days ahead” might be considered suggestive but weak evidence that BCG and Google new something of those plans. However, combine this with the fact that they forecast a tenfold increase of digital payments and of the merchant acceptance network by 2020 without giving any real compelling reason why such an unlikely development should come to pass.

Democrat Losers: Pathologically Incapable of Getting It

Counterpunch |  In 2008, the American people overwhelmingly voted for “change” in Washington. They never got it. Hence, Trump. To pretend that there’s not a straight line connecting the failed policies of Barack Obama and the subsequent rise of Donald John Trump, is to ignore the obvious and to shrug off responsibility for the situation the country is in today.

Obama created Trump, the man didn’t simply appear from the ether. Had Obama acted in good faith and kept his promises to shake up the status quo, end the foreign wars, restore civil liberties, hold Wall Street accountable or relieve the economic insecurity that working families across the country now feel, Hillary Clinton would have been a shoe-in on November 8th. As it happens, Obama made no effort to achieve any of these goals, which is why Hillary was defeated in the biggest political upset of the last century.

The point we need to underscore here, is that the Democratic leadership is responsible for Trump, not the working class people in the red states who merely did what they had to do to effect change.  These people can’t be blamed for voting their own best interests. That’s what people do. Had Obama done anything to genuinely improve the economy, things might have turned out differently. But he didn’t, in fact– as popular as Obama was– a full two thirds of the American people thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. In other words, the election was a referendum on Obama’s performance as the primary steward of the US economy. Obama lost that referendum.

Even so, the DNC could have reloaded and taken a different approach to the economy under Hillary. They didn’t. They thought the “recovery” meme was effective enough to put them over the finish line. But it wasn’t effective enough, because too many people saw that the recovery was a fraud, that there was no recovery,  it was all a slick Madison Avenue public relations campaign aimed at concealing the fact that Obama had restructured the US economy in a way that deliberately kept growth at-or-below 2 percent so the Fed could continue pumping cheap money to its constituents on Wall Street while everyone else saw their personal debtload grow, their retirement savings vanish, and their standards of living slip.  Isn’t that what really happened? Obama’s grand restructuring project has resulted in perennial economic stagnation and widespread pessimism about the future. The former president  oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from working class people to parasitic plutocrats in the history of the nation. It wasn’t an accident. Obama was following a blueprint that was given to him by his handlers at the DNC.

So now the country is to be led by a brash billionaire reality TV celebrity who has no previous political experience and who seems unusually sensitive to any kind of personal criticism. Not surprisingly, there’s no sign that the Democratic leadership feels any responsibility for this extraordinary development.

Why is that? Why hasn’t anyone in the DNC admitted their failure, admitted that they didn’t accurately gage the mood of the country or the hunger for change? Why haven’t they acknowledged that putting the most untrustworthy candidate of all time –a thoroughly dislikable, warmongering harridan– on the ticket was a mistake? Why?

It’s because this vile collection of corporate Dems who run the party are incapable of self reflection, right? It’s because the Podesta throng — who still hold the party in their deathgrip –truly believe that bamboozling their base with Potemkin executives like Barack Obama, is a terrific model for running the government. They think Obama’s tenure as president was a success story, mainly because  his grandiloquent bloviating and larking around on stage with sleeves rolled up like an overpaid athlete– diverted attention from the trillions of dollars  that were being sluiced to the banking whores on Wall Street. Isn’t that why the Dems haven’t changed?

Why This Shameless Hypocrite Jaw-Jacking From New Haven Instead of Nuevo Laredo?

WaPo |  Ernesto Zedillo, a professor in the field of international economics and politics at Yale University, was president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000.

The Mexican government has been courteous toward Donald Trump, as both a candidate and now U.S. president. Indeed, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has paid a high political cost at home for his being open to working constructively with President Trump. But Peña Nieto has done the right thing by putting the interests of Mexico and the preservation of mutually beneficial relations with our neighbor above his personal popularity. Nevertheless, the time has come to admit that the actions of the new administration have closed off, at least for the foreseeable future, the possibility of any agreement being achieved through dialogue and negotiation that could satisfy the interests of both parties.

This is an unfortunate and sad situation, but the effort to accommodate President Trump’s capricious wishes has proven worthless and should not be continued. It is not useful for Mexico or the United States.

In retrospect, the probability of reaching a mutually beneficial agreement on the topics on President Trump’s Mexico agenda was always small, considering that his demands have defied legal and economic rationality all along.

Mexican Government Faces Yet Another Crisis of Legitimacy

therealnews |  So, John, give us some background about these protests because people are said to be reacting to the price increase of gasoline. So, is that all? Or is there more to this?

JOHN ACKERMAN: No, this is not just about gas or gas prices. This is another step in the collapse of the legitimacy of the ruling government, the ruling regime. We can compare it, I think, to the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela about 25 years ago, the beginning of the '90s. Carlos Andrés Pérez came back for his second presidency, and one of his most important reforms was more privatizing -- they already had more privatizing then was in Mexico but deepening the privatization of oil in Venezuela. This lead to a fiscal crisis of the state and lead to widespread protests and the collapse of what used to be considered the most stable, centralist democracy in Latin America -- Venezuela. And we had a revolution, a peaceful revolution, which lead to a new constitution, lead to a new government. And this is the process we're in the middle of in Mexico.

Now, I'm not trying to say that you know, we're going to have a Chávez coming in, or Maduro, or that Mexico is going to follow the path of Venezuela -- for good or for bad, or however you want to look at it -- but Mexico is going through a collapse of its sitting government and this is being expressed through the question of oil.

When Enrique Peña Nieto came in, in 2012, one of his most important policy programs was to privatize oil. As a result of this oil privatization, he promised that oil prices would come down and that Mexico would grow through increased international investment.

Well, this 20% increase from one day to the next on New Year's Day of 2017 has finally convinced the Mexican people demonstrating this that it was all just a lie from the very beginning. He did privatize oil but it was not for the benefit of Mexicans but for the benefit of his friends and the big oil companies. And so, this is finally sinking in with the Mexican people -- and that's what we're seeing with these protests explicitly against the gas hike, but more generally against authoritarianism and oppression in Mexico.

KIM BROWN: Well, John, then it begs the question, I mean, do you think the situation could endanger the president's position? Because according to polls, his popularity was already was already at a historic low.

JOHN ACKERMAN: Yes. Enrique Peña Nieto is the most despised, I would say, President we've had in Mexico in recent history. Not even, you know, Carlos Slim, or Vicente Fox, or Felipe Calderón, who also got very low on their public opinion ratings, did not get as low as Enrique Peña Nieto. Mexico had been until Peña Nieto an exceptional Latin America. The Mexican people, although they saw there were serious problems with neoliberalism, repression, authoritarianism, in the end, they kind of hoped or believed that the President was going to save them, that he was on their side of the people. But with Enrique Peña Nieto this has changed.

Now Peña Nieto has approval ratings down in, you know, 10, 15... 20% is the highest number I've seen in recent polls. And he gave a State of the... you know, a national address on all the television channels yesterday, at night, and he looked pretty tired. You could note it in his face. You could note it in his expression. He himself seems to kind of want to pack his bags. He's still got another two years left, which could be too long for him.

One of the good opportunities is that, you know, we do have elections coming up next year in 2018, a federal presidential election, also for national congress, lots of state governments. And so that could be an opportunity for reviving politics and democracy in Mexico.

Peña Nieto is no Putin

telesurtv |  Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex has been ransacked by President Enrique Peña Nieto, other government officials, and the country's oligarchy, and now that it’s bankrupt they have turned it into a Ponzi scheme, prominent economist, researcher, analyst and author James Cypher told teleSUR.

“The Mexican State was levitated by rivers of gold received through the high levels of oil profits but this gold was used so that the oligarchy and their buddies could evade taxes ... almost,” Cypher said. “Public treasury was emptied out years ago — apart from the oil revenues, So, although Pemex has been a huge business, authorities were forced to seek loans everywhere to the oil company afloat.”

Currently, Pemex owes so much money and has been granted so many loans that it struggles to obtain credits, he said, adding that on Thursday the company sold bonds worth over US$250 million, increasing their debt in order to pay off loans.

“In other words, Pemex financing has become a Ponzi scheme,” said Cypher.

The Mexican State has always been in charge and barks out all the orders regarding all issues related to the country, but their achievements or profits always end up in the pockets of government officials.

“The State is an instrument used only for the benefit of the Mexican oligarchy first, and then for U.S. businesspeople and a few more — for example Canadians matter plenty in the mining sector,” Cypher explained.

The U.S. expert and analyst, who currently works for the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, said that contrary to what teleSUR's article on Pemex says regarding partial privatization of Pemex, Peña Nieto's intentions are to completely sell off the company to private enterprises.

The Mexican president’s plans for Pemex contemplate that the company continue operating but it will only carry out support activities that are not profitable.

“We have not had time to analyze how far Pemex will be stripped down but undoubtedly all profitable areas of the company will be taken over by the Mexican oligarchy first, and the rest to the giant oil companies from Houston, Texas,” he noted.

Cypher went on to say that it is almost certain that Hillary Clinton and her advisors participated in one way or another in creating the policies for privatization Peña Nieto has been pushing forward since he took office in 2013.

The renowned economist agreed with leftist Mexican party Morena saying, “Of course! The current Mexican government is going to take their usual share.”

Democrat Losers: The New Democrats Long War on the Working Class

neweconomicperspectives |  To sum it up, Brazile is running the DNC even though all the folks who call themselves “leaders” of the Democratic Party know that she used the Wall Street Journal to attack the democratic-wing of the Democratic Party as traitors to the Nation because they did not support Bush’s dishonest, unlawful, and catastrophic invasion of Iraq.  Further, she praised, and demanded that Democrats emulate, three of the worst chicken hawks who framed the lies, chose the bank fraud as their puppet, and bungled the occupation of Iraq.

So here is my obvious question: what political party in its right mind would choose Brazile as its leader?   She is a disgrace.  Listen to the jingoistic and juvenile phrase she used to sum up the New Democrat’s pro-war policies, particularly in light of her denunciation of Democrats who opposed Bush’s lies as “effete.”  “[Democrats] “need to return to … muscular national security principles.”   “Muscular?”  Of course, people who invade and kill people on the basis of lies are “manly” while those who oppose such invasions are “effete.”  Manly men are “muscular.”  They do not think.  A man that uses his brains rather than his muscles is not smart; he is “effete.”  We should glory in “regime change” because it is “muscular” – even if it transforms Iraq into an ally of Iran and leads to a series of sectarian civil wars in Iraq.  On the issues that separate the New Democrats from progressives, Brazile represents everything that the Democratic Party should be opposing.

Note also that Brazile, unintentionally revealed the massive ideological contradiction, the black hole of hypocrisy that forms the New Democrats’ gravitational center.  The New Democrats purportedly stand for the “end of big government,” deep distrust of government workers and programs, and austerity.  The New Democrats rushed to cheer Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq even though it was the quintessential “big government” endeavor.  They rushed to spend trillions of dollars on the Iraq war and military spending that exceeded the collective spending of the next nine nations with the highest military spending.  The New Democrats demanded that all Democrats cheer this wasteful government spending, which harmed our military, maimed and killed our troops, and maimed and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.  The New Democrats claim that the federal budget deficits and so-called “funding gaps” on the safety net mandate massive cuts in social spending programs.  They promote invasions and unnecessary and harmful military spending programs that could easily “pay for” those social programs if austerity really were a desirable policy (it is not).

Note that each of these examples of the New Democrats’ black hole of hypocrisy also represented an assault on the American working class.  Our service members are typically working class.  The people hurt most by austerity’s denial of full employment are the working class.  The people who gain enormously from austerity are Wall Street elites and the top one-ten-thousandth of one percent.  The people hurt most by budget cuts in social programs and the safety net are the working class.  The people hurt most by the New Democrats’ embrace of the three “de’s” are the working class.

The New Democrats are shocked that after waging their long war against the white working class – the white working class turned on the New Democrats’ candidate.  Who could ever have guessed that after the New Democrats abused the working class for over 30 years, the white working class would decide to return the favor?  (Again, yes, I understand that the Trump administration is betraying the working class.)

Still the Baddest..., Tulsi Gabbard 2020

congress.gov | 

H.R.6504 - To prohibit the use of United States Government funds to provide assistance to Al Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to countries supporting those organizations, and for other purposes.114th Congress (2015-2016)

BILL

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Sponsor:	Rep. Gabbard, Tulsi [D-HI-2] (Introduced 12/08/2016)
Committees:	House - Foreign Affairs; Intelligence (Permanent)
Latest Action:	12/08/2016 Referred to House Intelligence (Permanent)  (All Actions)